Project Accounting in Dynamics GP

Question Status

I have a question that I'm hoping someone will provide feedback on. I have heard from several sources that the Project Accounting in Dynamics GP is not good. However, I've rcently started studying it via E-Learning and frankly don't understand why people think it unworthy.

Can someone educate me as to why Project Accounting is not good? I'd also welcome the opposite feedback in terms of why it is good.

Project Accounting is a fine module, does what it says it does on the box, and does it every time....as are all the other modules in GP (excepting some noteable exceptions in the past which are now discontinued!!!).

As always with GP, the quality of the consultant implementing the product is absolutely paramount. I have seen many perfectly good companies prepared to write off an investment in GP because "It basically doesn't work" (their words), following a failed implementation. Its not the software that has failed, it is the people they have implementing it - always.

Project Accounting can be a mysterious science at the best of times, especially since there are as many ways to account for a project as there are projects. Or put better, every company has its own specific metrics they use to decide how one project compares to another, and this is what makes implementing any PA software tricky sometimes. But the GP PA software is feature rich, flexible and stable.

I agree with Stewart. All of our clients are happy using Project Accounting, primary reason being the functionality in GP is designed great and I heard some clients do tell me they find it extensive when compared to Oracle and others.

Secondly, Their requirements do match with existing GP functionality of PA . Thirdly, Our implementation is right on track. Forth advantage is if you feel your requirment is industry specific, you have third party modules like Wennsoft, Olympic Project cost which offers additional functionality for PA, thus covering almost 100% of what an efficient PA must be doing.

Finally, the utmost advantage in GP is the integration with all other modules. PA almost integrates with each and every module of GP in a complete automated manner.

I like GP PA functionality and my clients are also happy with it. So, I dont have any negatives to talk about.

I agree as well, we just finished a phase 1 go live on a truly gigantic project accounting implementation and with all the hard work there very few issues at go live. There are some features I would like to see added (like recurring batches) but the module works just fine, even for complex projects.

Thanks so much for the generous feedback. You have restored my faith in GP's PA module, which I believe, after reading your posts, was eroded by people that did not truly understand PA and how to implement it.

When studying the PA module, as I mentioned perviously, I couldn't understand why some felt it inadequate. From everything I can see it is very feature-rich and the fact that its design is based to comply to FASB SOP 81-1 seems ideal.

Not to take advantage, but I do have one other question. From what I understand, because I have no personal experience, Dynamics SL is very strong in project accounting. GP's PA seems so powerful, in what ways does SL prove better than GP in this regard? In other words, why would one go with Dynamics SL as opposed to Dynamics GP?

I believe that SL is targeted more towards construction-type projects and has the ability to deal with phases and tasks. GP really handles the accounting side of a project. It is meant to handle the collection of costs. You can come up with some ways to track phases and tasks.

I don't have too much experience with Project Accounting but I have seen companies with both Wensoft and Workforce ROI. I also had a client that wanted to track project costs and turned them on to Analytical Accounting because of their needs. The one drawback that I have seen with GP's Standard Project Accounting module is that there is no way (that I know of) to charge project costs to a project from a Payables Transaction or a Journal Entry. Costs against a project that just come from an invoice would need to be entered as a Receivings Transaction Entry without a PO in order to select the project. With a journal entry, I don't know how you could do this.

But like people mentioned, it depends on your need. When I was working for a VAR, they used project accounting to do all the client billings and the consultants billed using business portal. That worked nicely.

Yes, that is one downfall that was previously noted to me; instead of the sub-modules, like AP, feeding PA, all the transactions have to originate from PA and flow to the sub-modules. However, it seems that one can get the information into PA by using the Miscellaneous Log transactions, as callen mentioned.

My main goal in pinging the Forum on this was to make sure I wasn't wasting my time looking into PA. It seems that it can be viable solution, so I'll be delving further into it.

So does anyone know a way to mass change PM entries. I need to move numerous PM entries from one cost code to many different cost codes. Spending the time to return each line item and then reenter into the correct cost code is makinig me ill to think about . Help anyone?

We use a MS Partner named Silicon Digital Systems - (425) 898-8417 to make mass changes or even full data conversions to Dynamics GP 10 and the PA Module. We do projects for banks who've acquired other companies that have Peachtree, QuickBooks, MAS90, ACCPAC etc. and they need to do a full data conversion to Dynamics GP and load up the "Jobs" transaction history to Dynamics GP PA Module. Some of the projects have then required mass changes to breakout to the Cost Code distributions in PA. Many of our projects have required millions of transactions to be changed in PA. The guys as SDSI have done a great job over the years on many full data conversions and mass data changes for our clients who use GP and the PA module. Their website url is http://www.silicondigitalsystems.com/dataconversion.

For this client’s Project Accounting configuration we are required to set up the same project in multiple company databases. One company database will be designated as the billing company that interfaces and actually bills the customer. All other companies just capture costs and will generate intercompany transactions associated to the projects. We have only one issue….. The client has costs that are passed through directly to the customer, referred to as pass through costs. When these costs are generated in the intercompany projects they need to eventually be billed to the customer, thus needing to be recorded in the billing company.

Proper accounting would dictate that an invoice be generated from the intercompany project and recorded as an Accounts Payable invoice against the project in the billing company. The client would like the recording of the pass through costs (only) from the intercompany project to the billing project to be recorded in an automated fashion.